Sean Mannion

Category: Filmmaking

  • Maybe Sunshine is Coming

    Maybe Sunshine is a web series I’m producing starring Lisa Hammer and her band Radiana. The show was pitched to me in 2014 as being tonally like Curb Your Enthusiasm. Lisa and her husband, and show co-creator/director, Levi had some ambitious ideas about the project and I was sold on it pretty quickly. Since our initial meeting we’ve worked closely together to make the series happen. Being a low budget project shooting around schedules was necessary and with a large cast including the full band that stretched out production quite a bit. As of my writing this we are nearing the finish line, with our episodes in post-production and only a little more to pick up to finish up the project.

    I connected with Lisa and Levi while I was looking for music for my film Time Signature. I discovered Lisa’s music and the album from her band Radiana, and I knew that’s what I wanted for the film. So, I reached out to them. We didn’t connect right away, but by coincidence Carolyn Maher, my Assistant Director for Time Signature (who then became my Producer for Meme), had an exchange with Levi about the web series he and Lisa wanted to do. Remembering that I had mentioned Lisa’s music and that I had said I reached out to her, Carolyn connected me with Levi. I had brunch with Levi and Lisa and discussed using the Radiana music for Time Signature and they talked to me about Maybe Sunshine and I was immediately interested in getting on board.

    It took us a little bit of time to get off the ground and Carolyn also joined the project as a Producer. There were a few hard deadlines we had for shooting certain episodes based on certain events and availabilities. That really helped us get rolling. I brought in Director of Photography Myles Tyrer-Vassell, who I’d worked with on another web series where I served as Assistant Director. The first episode we shot was number 4. It features a showdown between our band, Radiana, and their rival, Late Cambrian (also a real band, and they’re wonderful and you should check them out). Late Cambrian was due to go on tour for several months and it was decided we wanted to shoot that episode with them before their tour. It was a bit of a crazy shoot running from a late call time to the early hours of the morning with all sorts of little issues and the team finding our pace working together, but it all came together and the results were great. The rough cut of that episode even won the Audience Choice Award at the Indie Works Web Series Month 2015 event. Soon after that we shot our other episode that had a hard deadline: the finale. I won’t get into exactly what the final episode is, but it ends pretty spectacularly. Since those initial shoot days we’ve been picking up the episodes when we can get everyone together and soon we’ll have wrapped the whole first season.

    As of now we have some level of rough cut for almost every episode of our first season. It works! The show is funny. It looks good. It sounds good. It has some meat to it. I’m really looking forward to being able to premiere the show. I’m really looking forward to being able to promote the show too as we’ve got some interesting plans for that. I’m really excited about this project and the potential it has.

    It’s been a fun series to produce and it’s been interesting for me personally to be able to sit back and take on mostly just a producer role. Most of my projects are my projects and that means that all the responsibility falls to me for those. This is a bit different in that my role is to support the vision of the creators Lisa and Levi. My role is to help them make this project what they want it to be. It’s different. It’s fun. I’m looking forward to being able to do it again on more projects.

  • Beneath the Black Moon: A Film Within a Film

    Beneath the Black Moon title screenshot

    Beneath the Black Moon is our film-within-the-film for Meme. It’s not our main video in the film but it serves some important plot points. It was referenced in some earlier versions of the script and ultimately became a bigger part of the story as rewrites progressed. No scenes were explicitly referenced but the tone and style was. So, after we’d begun shooting Meme, I needed to write this project to shoot during the process of shooting Meme.

    As we were shooting Meme on no budget we needed to work around everyone’s schedules. That stretched production out a bit and by June we had only a day or two left of principal photography but availabilities put us on hiatus until August. So, I decided to pull together the shoot for Beneath the Black Moon. We shot with a different cast and crew but still a wonderful group to work with.

    For Beneath the Black Moon I tagged my friends Lisa Hammer and Levi Wilson, co-creators of the web series I’ve been producing Maybe Sunshine. I wanted them both to be on camera for this project. I also grabbed Jeanette Sears to shoot the project, who I work with sometimes as an instructor for the I Was There Film Workshops. Nicole Solomon, Art Director for Meme, joined to help me produce and do the practical special effects. The cast except for Lisa and Levi had to be newly recruited as I was using most of the actors I like to work with in the main storyline for Meme.

    Beneath the Black Moon is very different from Meme in that it is pretty much a parody. It’s purposely cheesy and hastily put together. The film is supposed to be a homage to low budget straight to VHS horror of the 80s and 90s. I think we pulled it off. I think we made something fun that people have appreciated over the last few months since we released it. It’s not a wink and a look how bad this is style parody. It’s earnest in its way. We’re not trying to draw attention to what’s bad or cheesy. None of the instruction I gave actors on set was about doing something for a joke about the film. It was all about playing the characters they were playing, who were all already pretty absurd from the start. I think that allowed us to have a lot of fun shooting and makes the project more fun to watch on its own.

    While you can watch Beneath the Black Moon now on YouTube not all of what you see is likely to make it into Meme.Beneath the Black Moon will show up on TV screens in Meme and certain scenes will be used to parallel the events of Meme and help make or contrast the point of those scenes. That’s what the film was primarily written for. How much will ultimately make it into Meme remains to be seen as we are still editing. I’m looking forward to seeing how much we keep and how much we cut and how effective it is as part of this feature. In the meantime, if you haven’t watched it again recently, take a look at Beneath the Black Moon again. Do you recognize the final scene from anywhere? It’s a recreation of the final scene from a classic mind-blowing film of the 1980s. How did we do in recreating it?

  • Meme Year-End Update

    Meme Year-End Update

    Meme-Updates

    It has been a bit of journey getting this film to where it is right now. At this point in 2013 I was looking at our unsuccessful Kickstarter for the film and thinking about how or even if we’d be getting the project off the ground. A lot of things changed. I simplified the script. I made some new connections that made shooting possible. With the help of a lot of generous people we shot the film through the end of 2014 and most of 2015. Now, we’re in post-production.

    So far the post-production process has been interesting. I’ve never made anything this long so it’s a bit overwhelming to even look at the film’s timeline. Post started back in December 2014, really. I put together all of the office scenes we shot in November 2014 for a clip to share privately with cast and crew. Then as we progressed I assembled early cuts of scenes. By early August 2015 I had a linear assembly of everything we’d shot up until the final scenes we needed to get. By the end of September I had a slightly refined version of that assembly with still plenty of work to do. It was good to have it then because it wasn’t long before we realized the film needed to be shaken up a little.

    With the amount of time it took to shoot it gave us the opportunity to have a parallel extended time to get a look at the film as a whole. It works. The characters and story progress, but the flow of the edit needed something more. So, because we already were able to look at everything and see how it fit together over time and come out of our final days of shooting with an assembly in just a few weeks, we were able to see that we could make it better by shaking it up a little and taking the form of the film in a slightly different direction. What direction remains to be seen. We’re still working with it, but I’m very happy that we can work with it. I’m also excited at the possibilities.

    While we’re working on all this post-production we’re also heavily involved in building a following for the film. We’ve been active on social media since the first day of shooting and established dedicated accounts for the project across multiple social media services early in 2015. We’re currently building on those services and sharing some fun things. We’ve got big plans for them later in 2016, but before we get there there’s still plenty of fun stuff to share. So, if you use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube, please follow us on any or all of those services for regular updates. If you’re not into social media but don’t mind getting an e-mail on a monthly basis, join us on my e-mail newsletter, where I’ll be updating regularly on the progress of Meme.

    In 2016 we’re looking to complete post-production by about mid-year and pursue screenings at festivals. We have a plan set forth for that but as with anything it will evolve as needed because it’s more important that the final product is good and what we want it to be than to meet any particular deadline. As I said we have plans in the works for our social media. Some behind-the-scenes photos and clips to share and some videos like our Wotan beer commercials that we’ll be sharing. Maybe more. You’ll have to keep an eye on us to keep up to date. So, please do keep an eye out by following us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube, or signing up for the e-mail newsletter.